Private initiative keeps the memory of the former Nazi camp alive

The story begins with a snack. In 1944, the 16-year-old carpenter’s apprentice Gerhard Eisenächer gave it to Robert Lançon, who was four years older than him and who was a concentration camp prisoner working in the same carpentry shop. “They liked each other right away. They couldn’t understand each other, my father couldn’t speak French, Robert Lançon couldn’t speak German, but there was sympathy right from the start,” says Gerhard Eisenächer’s daughter Evelyn Schurzmann.

From then on, her father gave away his food every day. “His mother, on the other hand, was surprised why he wanted to take so much food with him. He then spoke openly about it, and the mother then made more bread,” says Schurzmann, as she leads the way through a forest covered with delicate snow fluff.

The Ellrich-Juliushütte subcamp was located here from May 1944 to April 1945. It belonged to the Mittelbau-Dora camp complex. Prisoners were used to set up ammunition and weapons factories in the tunnels. Others worked in companies and on farms in the surrounding area, like Lançon, who worked in the Ellrich carpentry workshop.

Day after day, residents could see columns of emaciated figures in prisoner uniforms walking through the streets. Around 8,000 men were in the camp at the same time: Ukrainians and Russians, Poles, French and Belgians, as well as some Hungarian Jews who had been transported here from Auschwitz. More than 4,000 of them died. The death rate was very high even for the Nazi camp system.

Now the forest has reclaimed the former camp site. Trees and bushes have become established in the masonry of the former plaster factories where some of the prisoners were housed. The brick walls of Block 4 can still be seen rising between trees. An information board points to an accident: a newly constructed wall that was supposed to divide the rooms suddenly collapsed, burying numerous prisoners.

Evelyn Schurzmann shows the path that leads past the foundations of former barracks to the former crematorium. You leave Thuringia and reach Lower Saxony. The inner-German border ran through the middle of the former Ellrich-Juliushütte concentration camp subcamp. On the East German side, the buildings were torn down so that the border guards had a clear field of vision and field of fire. The crematorium on the Lower Saxony side was demolished by the Federal Border Guard in the years immediately after the Wall was built following a visit by the then Minister for Internal German Affairs, Rainer Barzel. Barzel wanted to see the “eyesore” removed, the local press wrote at the time.

It was only shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall that a memorial stone was placed on the initiative of residents of the nearby Lower Saxony community of Walkenried. Inge and Gerhard Eisenächer made it their mission to look after the memorial stone and also to keep the path through the forest clean.

A friendship for life

Robert Lançon and Gerhard Eisenächer, the unlikely work colleagues in the carpentry shop, lost touch with each other after the end of the war. It wasn’t until years later that they met again. Evelyn Schurzmann reconstructs this encounter from her father’s stories: “It was in the 1950s. Lançon came to the Mittelbau-Dora memorial with a delegation of prisoners; my father was employed there as a police officer. They immediately recognized each other and hugged each other.” Lançon then learned German. A friendship developed.

In the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lançon often came to Ellrich and he invited the Eisenächers to France. Evelyn Schurzmann remembers that Lançon often said to her father: “I could have ten brothers, but you are the best.” Lançon died in 1998 at the age of 74. He had one more wish: some of his ashes should be scattered in the Ellrich camp. “He wanted to be with his dead comrades.”

Inge Eisenächer makes a promise

The Eisenächers fulfilled their friend’s last wish. They cared for the memorial stone and the path to it with dedication. After Gerd Eisenächer’s death in 2007, the widow continued the work alone. She was known for this in the town and also in the neighboring town of Walkenried, on the other side of the former border. Some people from Walkenrieder thanked them personally for the cleaning work, put a little money behind the memorial stone and wrote “Thank you”.

Evelyn Schurzmann often worried about her mother when she went into the forest alone. “One time young people came and asked: ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Well, you can see that I’m sweeping here,’ replied my mother. And the young people replied: ‘Then be glad that you aren’t lying there yourself.’ They added sayings like: ‘They could all die again.'”

Andreas Heise also reports damage and graffiti. Four years ago, Heise launched the “Against Forgetting – We Show Face” initiative together with Evelyn Schurzmann. At that time, Schurzmann’s 92-year-old mother was no longer able to maintain the path and memorial stone due to her age. But Heise and Schurzmann didn’t just want to clean up. Together with other citizens, they wanted to create a place where people who lost loved ones in the camp could mourn and remember their dead. History should not be forgotten.

Various members of “Against Forgetting” offer tours of the site. Once police officers wanted a tour. They had previously filed a complaint about neo-Nazi graffiti on the remains of the Wall. “The officials didn’t know anything about the camp before,” says Heise, who also leads school classes through the former camp.

Balance between commemoration and nature conservation

The fact that tours can take place on the site, which has been overgrown for decades, is also thanks to the partnership with the Thuringia Nature Conservation Foundation. She is responsible for the area on the Thuringian side, for the nature reserve that forms the Green Belt along the old border. From a conservation perspective, it’s about letting plants and animals do their thing and ensuring safe paths through the wilderness. In this special place, however, the culture of remembrance is added.

“A challenge,” as Mareike Schult, area manager for the southern Harz, reports: “It’s not that easy, because no goal is above the other, monument protection and nature conservation are balanced. An agreement was reached that the places where remains of the wall have been preserved or where archaeologists want to continue digging will be kept clear. Everything around remains nature.” Some trees that threaten the remains of the wall of Block 4 are marked in red and will soon be felled. The lawn is regularly mowed on the former roll call area. And the foundations of the infirmary are also largely free of vegetation. This is also ensured by jointly organized volunteer work.

GDR escape attempts in the forest

For a long time little was known about the camp in the communities of Ellrich and Walkenried and the neighboring towns. “In the past, little was said about it outside the family. It was also a restricted area,” explains Schurzmann. The unease with the place was equally pronounced in East and West.

The history of the Wall is another aspect that the “Against Forgetting” initiative touches on. Some people have friends or relatives who tried to escape at this point. Mareike Schult from the Nature Conservation Foundation obtained the original truck with which a family tried to break through the tracks right behind the former concentration camp in the 1980s. Unsuccessful. The truck was artificially armored with metal plates. Shots into the tires brought the vehicle to a stop. The truck is now to be prepared for a permanent exhibition, as is the former border tower, which is still standing.

Young people are also interested

In order to commemorate history, Heise would like to have a house as an educational institution in the future. He is seeing more and more popularity among the population. The interest of young people and schools from Lower Saxony is also increasing. A concept for guided tours is currently being developed so that more interested citizens can take them.

Universities are also involved in the processing. In 2019, two mass graves containing ashes and charred body parts of presumably over 1,000 victims were found. The University of Osnabrück then organized a research excursion to the former concentration camp together with the Nature Conservation Foundation. Sections of the ground were geophysically examined and structural objects were measured with 3D scans. This type of basic research should be continued.

Creating visibility is one of the major challenges of grassroots movements like “Against Forgetting”. From next year, fixed dates for guided tours will be announced on the Nature Conservation Foundation’s website. The large Mittelbau – Dora memorial also occasionally offers guided tours to the branch. Another partner is the tourist information center in Walkenried, which has extended its monastery route to the memorial site. The Walkenried historical association supports this, as do many citizens.

The memorial site is already equipped with carefully designed information boards and two memorial stones. The second was donated by the Belgian city of Leuven in 1994. Delegations regularly visit the site, especially from countries where the victims came from. Heise considers it a success that the mass graves are now officially recognized as war cemeteries. There are plans to develop a memorial concept with international prisoner associations.

All that’s missing is politics. In the last state election, the AfD received 41 percent of the first votes and 34 percent of the second votes in the region. The relationship with the party representatives is perceived as “icy”.